Empty Boy
by Dragonflae
Summary: Grow a personality, Ao. Rewrite of "If You Think You Hate Masaya Aoyama".


**Okay. I did this for the sake of writing practice. It's been a literal AGE since I posted anything on this site, and after re-reading my previous stories I figured a rewrite of "If You Think You Hate Masaya Aoyama" was long overdue. **

**The following is what happens when you stick a newly-discovered Edgar Allen Poe fangirl in a room with manga and a computer.**

**Read at your own risk.**

**Enjoy.**

Empty Boy

Growing up as he did, it was really no wonder when he finally snapped.

His entire childhood was depleted with false personality-Indeed, his entire _life _was spent with a false personality.

How ironic, how satirical it was that the demon king had professed that the persona Aoyama _did _possess had been invented by he himself!

It could have been true, for all Aoyama knew; for all he wanted to know. He felt so hollow, so vacant; he'd readily fracture under pressure but never instituted the courage enough to do so…he lived a lie since he was human enough to be self-aware.

Imagine, not letting on to the other kids that you couldn't stomach the chocolate cookies they all enjoyed and forcing them down your throat to sate your peers, time after time again! Always too afraid of rejection, of having to live in solitude to deviate even slightly from the rest of the company you kept! Choking, eyes-watering, nearly vomiting as you force yourself to smile calmly and laugh with the rest of them; your stomach being sick for days at a time. You not being able to get up and play, after that; you were confined to books and bed and a toilet, spewing from both ends thanks to the ill-fated allergy to the repulsively saccharine biscuit.

Imagine wanting so badly to garrote the delightful little puppy that your new mother and father figures thrust upon you, keeping the beast alive only to keep them happy and placid. The mind-numbing, constant yapping which would keep you up all the night, when all you wanted to do was sleep! Sleep, your great love, which opened a world where you could really be yourself…and then the dog, the wretched, cursed little scrap of fur with legs barking and whining from its cage, begging only for more and more of your already precious time!

Imagine every impulse, every urge you could ever have having to be masked and re-packaged to fit the norms of society, to ensure that you were safe from the unknown terrors which haunted your psyche eternally—Oh, the desolation! The despondency which would breed upon your soul like maize in the American summer!

How you would grow to hate your peers, your elders—The humanity you were born into!

That, my friends, was the life of Masaya Aoyama, the Empty Boy.

One would think that after all that happened to him, he would gain his self-worth back, that being celebrated and cheered for and loved by all who knew him would make him happy…

None of it ever did.

After ridding himself of the Beast for once and for all, after finally, _finally _eradicating the accursed voice in the dark, the terror that haunted him all his days, one would think he would find some small shred of happiness.

But nothing; not the fame, the wealth, the friendships nor even the girl smiling on his arm, would ever give him himself back.

And then the whispers began.

It was behind his back, at first; little things, snips of conversation at his workplace. His name would be mentioned very casually, occasionally.

Then it hit the magazine covers, and all hell broke loose.

He stole the girl, they said. He didn't deserve her!

He had affairs, they said. They took pictures of him merely speaking with other women and called it proof for their story.

He didn't even like girls, the stories went. He was in the closet. People formed organizations amongst themselves, just to try to get him to admit his sins.

The paparazzi were vicious.

Young girls formed hate groups—Imagine that! Hate groups!—and digitally stalked him without mercy or relent.

Why, he would wonder. Why all of this? Why against him?

Well, of course, he already knew.

It was the Other Guy.

The Other Guy, that maleficent, malevolent, magnanimous _idol _that the media obsessed itself with.

Aoyama hated the Other Guy.

They were complete opposites in every meaning of the word.

The Other Guy didn't need to fake a character, to put on a disguise. He was horrible and forceful and violent and on all accounts loveable on his own, without any script or role to play.

The Other Guy was confident and flirtatious, never missing a beat, and changed himself to nobody's will.

And they loved him for it.

Aoyama's envy went unparalleled.

It ended with the fanfiction.

Yes, that must have been it, what really caused him to break down.

They would hunt him down on the internet, no matter what alias he went by. He was bombarded by tale after tale, story after story of his girl—_His girl—_and the Other Guy. Hugging, kissing, in love, helping each other, having relations, having children, over and over and over again…

To boot, the sordid authors would morph Aoyama's personality to grotesque ends.

He would spontaneously become a blithering idiot, or homosexual, or adulterous, or abusive. At times, it was some appalling synthesis of the four.

One squalid teenager wrote him as a serial rapist, who repeatedly molested his lover and forced himself on neighboring children.

Of course, The Other Guy would laugh it off. He loved the girl, no doubt, but he'd had the grace to accept his defeat. He'd also jest about Aoyama's trouble with the fiction stories, tease him about them good-naturedly when around company and jeer at him when they were alone.

That's what Aoyama pictured, now; the smirk, the sharp white teeth beneath the modeled pale lips; the tone of the man's voice as he asked what little girls Aoyama had touched that day.

It had only been a few seconds ago when the alien made another snide remark, as soon as the rest of their party had left them alone on the patio.

Aoyama hadn't registered that he had picked up the kitchen knife from the picnic table.

He didn't register much of anything until they were prying the two apart while the women screamed and the men stood, aghast.

The Other Guy was dead, that was certain; his head had been nearly lopped off shortly after he released his first screech, not to mention the damage done to his chest cavity and torso.

Aoyama didn't regain his posture. He fought against his friends, screaming and trying to wrestle the knife out of his blonde coworker's hands. He could have gone after every man present, if let loose.

The authorities were called in, naturally, along with a medic, though the body was irreparable.

Everything seemed to move in slow motion, now.

Aoyama's lover now struggled against authorities, crying out to him, trying to take his hand as he was wrestled away. Her mud-brown eyes teamed with tears, which stained her cheeks as snot stained her upper lip. A ribbon came loose in her hair.

He remembered how she always loved Aoyama's smile the most about him; she could go on an hour-long tangent about how endearing it all was to her. He obtained nothing from it but a momentary pride in his acting ability; she'd never know he never meant it.

The only reason he even cared about the fiction and the paparazzi and the Other Guy's relations with the girl was simply because she was _his. _He'd never had anything else in the world to call his, nothing this doting and frail and pretty as she was. Perhaps it was an effect of masculinity, but what Aoyama considered his property, he saw to it that nobody disturbed.

The Other Guy's brothers, one older, one younger, were still bent over the body, the younger sobbing madly and the older roaring some incomprehensible insult in Aoyama's direction. He could see the curve of the man's chin, the fire in his eyes and spittle on his lips as he was held back by more composed individuals from wreaking havoc on Aoyama with the nearest object applicable for murder.

Finally, Aoyama looked back to the body, now being loaded onto a carrier and into the awaiting vehicle…the red was everywhere, staining the Other Guy's green clothes black and his ivory skin scarlet. He was falling apart as they moved him.

Aoyama was now heaved into the back of a car, handcuffed and laughing his jolly wits out.

He'd done it. After all that time, after every hour, every second of ignoring himself and his own wants, of forcing himself into complacent normalcy with the rest of the world, of giving up his own right to an individual identity he ever had the chance to grasp, he'd finally found himself. He had found something that made him want to live. He had, at last, grown a personality.

And he was empty no longer.


End file.
